


I Do But Tend

by Rubynye



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 04:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tish Jones stood over him, a frown on her pretty face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Do But Tend

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Set in late Season 3, between _The Sound of Drums_ and _Last of the Time Lords_; vague spoilers.  
> Written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/choc_fic/profile)[**choc_fic**](http://community.livejournal.com/choc_fic/).  
> A/N: With many, many thanks for [](http://derryderrydown.livejournal.com/profile)[**derryderrydown**](http://derryderrydown.livejournal.com/) for Britpicking and encouragement.

Title: I Do But Tend  
Fandom: Doctor Who  
Pairing: Captain Jack Harkness/Tish Jones.  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Tish Jones stood over him, a frown on her pretty face.  
Disclaimer: These characters and their settings do not belong to me.

Most things have a good side, and Jack's insomnia was coming in quite handy these days; the night-shift guards dared to whisper and mutter together as they stood by his cell, thinking he had to be asleep. He already had half their names, and knew each of them had at least one hostage to the Master. Maybe soon he'd figure out where those hostages were held.

Other things happened at night as well, goings-on that Jack observed with half-open eyes, keeping still no matter what he saw. Lying on the concrete floor he mostly saw feet, but feet could be very informative all on their own; the feet approaching now, heels clicking softly down the hall, belonged to someone lightweight and quick-moving, probably on the short side and definitely trying not to be heard. Most likely a young woman, and Jack lay and wondered if Mrs. Saxon were snatching a tiny bit of freedom or one of the aides were carrying a message.

However, these feet stopped at Jack's barred door, still out of sight. A key, old-fashioned metal, clicked in the lock; the door slid just far enough to let the visitor in, and back again.

Slender ankles above flat, black, depressingly practical shoes. Jack gave up the pretense of sleep and raised his head.

Tish Jones, Martha's sister, stood over him, squeezing her hands together, a frown on her pretty face. She was dressed in a maid's uniform, and though it fit her well Jack didn't think she'd find that a compliment. So he just said, quietly enough to not disturb the shadows around them, "hello, Miss Jones."

"Tish," she replied, "call me Tish," and as if she couldn't speak without moving, she began to pace. "I -- Captain Harkness?"

"Call me Jack," he said, as he sat up facing the door, moving slowly, trying to keep the chain from clanking. From his wrists, encased in welded handcuffs, it trailed four feet to the ring in the floor.

As he moved she stalked around him, heels clacking softly against the concrete, hands sliding up her arms until she was clutching herself. "Can I ask you something?"

"You can ask me anything." Jack put a little sparkle in his smile, but she didn't seem to notice. Too soon, perhaps.

"How do you..." Tish trailed off from one side of the cell to the other, shook her head and started over. "How do you know my sister?"

"We both traveled with the Doctor." Jack shifted a little on the concrete, a wistfully futile effort to be comfortable. "We're both Companions of his."

"Companions." Tish growled the word. Jack hadn't known she could growl, and he rather liked it. "Like Mrs -- Lady Saxon?"

"Oh, no, not like that." Jack snorted for emphasis. "The Doctor prefers his Companions to have brains in our heads."

"While the Master does his own thinking," Tish pointed out bitterly, something cracking in her voice. "He took our clothes away today, mine and my mum's. He gave us nothing to wear but these." She slapped at her skirt as if to knock it off her thighs. "He said we need to 'make ourselves useful', gave her a mop and bucket and made me scrub the bathrooms, and he's had poor Dad down in the barracks for _days_." Her fists clenched as her pacing speeded up, heels thumping on the floor. "He's made us slaves, Jack! When's it supposed to be, the 1800's? Wasn't that something you Yanks used to do?"

She turned to Jack, her smirk nothing like a smile, her eyes glinting harder than they ever should have, and he made sure the smile he gave her was sympathetic and soft. "I've been a slave," he offered. "More than once." He didn't add that it mostly hadn't been so bad; only two of his owners had bothered with brutality, and only once was he actually expected to do any hard labor, as opposed to the ease of being decorative. Tish was as pretty as her sister, but things weren't looking as if she were headed for an easy time.

Her doubtful expression heartened him with its normalcy; then she crouched beside him, and her warm human nearness was even better. "What was it like?"

"Usually boring," Jack said, and put a little sparkle into his reassuring smile. "Sometimes miserable." She half-shrugged as she nodded. "But it never lasts; I always found a way out. There's always a way out."

"I don't see one here." Tish slumped beside him, and Jack shifted over surreptitiously, just enough to brush shoulders. "I don't know what's going to happen to me, to my parents. To any of us."

"I know." When she turned to him, hope and curiosity still in her face, Jack smiled as brightly as he knew how, and hoped Martha would think he'd done well by her family while she was away. "I know what you're going to do. You're going to live through anything and everything that maniac throws at you, you're going to help your parents do the same, and you'll all going to survive until Martha returns and helps the Doctor free everyone."

"I don't know," Tish said, but her eyes were bright, her mouth curving into a smile. She leaned over and kissed Jack quickly on the cheek, and he grinned and pushed into the press of her soft lips, feeling just a little bit proud of himself.

She kissed him again, growled again, and flinched back as if she'd shocked herself, and his eyebrows went up as he looked at her, her wide dark eyes and parted lips and the slight sheen on her cheeks; if he could touch them he knew he'd feel her blush. They stared at each other for a handful of heartbeats, as the _Valiant_ slept on around them.

Then Tish lunged, and Jack barely kept himself upright. She wriggled beneath his arms, against his chest, her cheek pressed to his jaw. "I want," she whispered, low and urgent, squirming into his lap. "I want my life back! I had plans!" She wound her arms around his neck, her breath moist and warm on his ear, and he pressed his bound hands between her shoulderblades, feeling her breathing fast and heavy, her body's movement beneath the dress and her skin. "I had a career ahead of me, I was going to be as huge a success as Martha! And there was Billy at work and Avi at the health club and I was thinking of asking one of them for drinks, seeing what might happen, moving out in six months..." The stiff skirt crumpled over her thighs as it rode up, as she clung to him muttering fiercely in his ear. "Mum and Dad keep trying to protect me, they can't protect me from from this, from any of this, and Martha and Leo are out there alone, if either of them's still alive, and, and..."

Shuddering, Tish pressed her face into Jack's neck, clutching his shoulder, and he held her up against his chest as best he could, watched the darkness beyond his cell for movement, and tried to decide how much, under the circumstances, he should enjoy the way she felt clinging to him. "I just feel like I'm drowning," she murmured, lips brushing the skin over his pulse. "I just want to live."

"I know," Jack whispered, pressing his cheek to her springy hair. "You should want to. You have every right to."

"I..." Tish gave one half-crushed sob, shivered hard and stopped. Crying would be dangerously loud. Jack pushed his hands up, slowly so the chain wouldn't clank, until he could stroke her hair. Rather gracelessly, but he did the best he could, and at length her shaking eased a little, she slid her hands down his arms and tucked them under his open shirt, just the tee between her skin and his. And eventually she chuckled, as crushed as the sob and much quieter. "I should get off you," she muttered into his neck, leaning back as if to let go.

Jack didn't really think she was done, and he really didn't mind, especially not when the last couple weeks' physical contact had consisted of being tortured on the Master's orders. "Tish, look at me?"

She looked up, and he smiled again, not showing teeth but dimpling just the same, and she gave a little shudder she didn't seem to notice. "I like having you on me," he said, adding a little eyebrow motion, and she shook her head as she ducked it, quietly laughing as she slapped him lightly over his ribs. "Really, please don't go."

"Oh, all right." Tish's arms tightened around Jack's rib cage; she was strong, and he relaxed into the squeeze and rubbed along her spine, wishing he could wrap his arms around her. "I should..." She trailed off into a purr, and Jack pressed his smile into her hair, breathing in its scent. "You feel good," she muttered, squirming a little.

"You feel great," Jack told her, because she did, her warmth and soft breasts pressed to his chest, her strong arms around him and her warm heft settled on his lap. "You feel wonderful."

"Oh, stop it," she giggled, face against his shoulder. "Just stop it."

"I mean it." Jack slid his hands down towards the small of her back, his forearms laid against the curves of her sides. "I'm sorry I can't hold you better."

"This is good enough, this is... I just... I'm... I love my parents, but I'm kept with them all the time." Jack nodded, and she sighed. "I'm not a child."

"Definitely not." Jack let himself rumble that time, and felt her delicious answering shudder. "Tish?" She looked up at him again, her eyes wide and deep and dark, and he thought of telling her they were like space between the stars and thought about how hard it was becoming to sit still and asked her in his gentlest voice, "please kiss me?"

She grinned, and shook her head, and said, "_men_", and she kissed him, just as sweetly as he'd known she would. Her moan buzzed into his lips, and he pressed her against him a little harder and let himself enjoy how she felt until she twisted in his hold and pulled back. "Men," she growled again, smile bright in the dimness. "_Anything's_ an excuse."

"Yeah," Jack agreed, grinning, and she giggled and kissed him again, harder, deeper, swinging her leg over his lap, her thighs hot and gorgeous around his. Martha would probably consider this outside the realm of taking care of her little sister, and might figure out how to kill an immortal man if she found out, but Jack thought, as he slid his hands down the curve of Tish's back and she nipped his lower lip in response, that Tish could use a bit of something life-affirming. And that he wouldn't mind it either.

"Oh, God, dammit," Tish gasped, her hands tight on his shoulders. "Jack. I just met you, anyone can see in here, I _shouldn't_..."

"Should doesn't matter now," Jack murmured over her neck and kissed her on the silky spot where it met her jaw, resolving to laugh at himself later. Anyway, she'd definitely diverted most of the blood from his brain by now. "Only what is matters." Another kiss, and he'd mention the packets still in his back pocket; finding their partners prepared did tend to make 21st century people more enthusiastic, and Jack didn't think Tish would be an exception.

"Oh," she sighed, pulling her mouth along his cheek, and he tipped his head back and wished again, harder, that he had a warm bed for her, that he had his hands free to hold her, that he could get them all out of here.

"How _romantic_," echoed sardonically as white light blazed through the room. Jack blinked and groaned as the light seared his eyes; Tish gasped and shot up out of his hold, stumbling blindly over him as she staggered away. A mocking laugh, an electronic whirr, and Jack knew what he'd see if he could. The Master and his Toclafane.

"Little Tish, out of bed." The door grated open; the Master's deliberate pace thudded against the floor. Jack blinked again and looked up blearily at the Master's silhouette against the white light, surrounded by round dark blobs.

One extended its blades with a vicious click, asking gleefully, "are they naughty, Master? Shall we punish?"

"Now, now, there's no need for that," the Master told them, striding over to Tish where she huddled in the corner. He grasped a fistful of her hair, she exhaled a small and frightened sound, and Jack thought he could probably reach her before the Toclafane got him---

\---but they surrounded him, as if they knew what he was thinking, as the Master dragged Tish towards the cell door. "Look at you, all rumpled up. I like my maids to be tidy, my dear. Spic and span. But if you're bored I've got lots of lonely guards!"

Biting her lip, eyes round with fear, Tish whimpered, and Jack lurched to his feet. "No!" he shouted, and a Toclafane stuck him. It hurt like hell, like it always did, and when he screamed he heard it echo down the corridor, heard rustles and gasps and guards running, heard the Master laugh with delight. "No," Jack struggled to say as the chain pulled him off-balance, as the Toclafane laughed shrilly and stuck him again and shock made his knees give out."If you want--" Jack fell at the Master's feet, but he kept talking, pushing the words out. "--someone to throw to the wolves." Breathing was getting difficult and he tasted blood; the Toclafane must've punctured a lung. "Throw me."

"Ah, my gallant Captain." The Master punctuated that with a kick to Jack's ribs, and he coughed and curled up around the starburst of pain. "But you'd enjoy it too much. Still." The Master shoved Tish away from him, and she hit the cell door and clutched the bars, struggling to stay on her feet. "Go back to bed, little Tish. I'll have a full day planned for you in the morning!"

A nod and one of the wide-eyed guards gripped Tish's arm, leading her from sight as she pressed her hands to her face. "As for you," the Master continued, kicking Jack in the head, "it seems my accommodations have been a bit too lax. Tomorrow you'll start thinking on your feet, rather than with your lower parts." Toclafane bobbing behind him, the Master left, and the lights went out again.

Jack dizzily coughed up more blood, rolled over and curled a little tighter. The floor was still warm where he'd sat with Tish, and he took what comfort he could from it as he waited to heal. All that and he still ached with her delicious weight, but he hurt too much to do anything about that either, even if he felt like giving the guard a show. He was going to have to make this up to Tish, somehow, as they waited together to survive until Martha made it back to them. Thinking of that, trying not to groan aloud as the stab wounds knit themselves up, Jack pressed his cheek to the warm patch of concrete and closed his eyes.

 

_\- Doctor Who, Tish Jones/Jack Harkness: Bondage - "This is how it feels to drown"_ Oh, what a great prompt. I may have to write a sequel.


End file.
